The ultimate giveaway came when Robert B. Parker began running an author’s photo on his book jackets showing him in poses with his dog. For years, and over the course of a dozen or more novels in Parker’s compelling series featuring the Boston private eye Spenser, I had figured that Parker, in shaping Spenser’s personality and back story, had borrowed elements from his own life and grafted them on to his fictional guy Spenser. Parker had fought in the Korean War; so did Spenser.

Stonechild and Rouleau are back for round 3, tell us about Tumbled Graves.

The book opens with the disappearance of a woman and her three year old daughter, an investigation that begins in Kingston, Ontario, but expands to Gananoque, Ottawa and a biker bar in Montreal. In addition, major developments take place in the lives of the main cops: Officer Kala Stonechild becomes guardian for her cousin’s teenage daughter while Staff Sergeant Jacques Rouleau must face the impending death of his ex-wife.

Put on the Armour of Light is an old-fashioned mystery in the amateur sleuth tradition, with touches of humour and romance. It’s set in Winnipeg in 1899 and the hero is a young Presbyterian minister, Charles Lauchlan. I’m more attracted to mystery books where character and setting are to the fore, and where the detective uses his or her grey matter to solve the crime rather than whizz-bang forensic technology. So that’s the kind of book I tried to write.

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